


Artifact of the Dark

by BrownieFox



Series: of two archives [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Artifact Storage, Character Death, Gen, The Dark, is it still major character if they're an oc that only shows up here, yes this is an oc centric fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26399824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: Statement of Holly Sterling regarding their first Artifact Shipment while working in Artifact Storage at the Magnus Institute.
Series: of two archives [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838722
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Artifact of the Dark

**_“Give me a statement, anything, I just need a statement.”_ **

I joined the Institute when I was twenty. I had worked odd-and-end jobs for the first couple years out of highschool. I thought about going to Uni, and I’m still thinking about it, but for now I am needed here.

Back then, of course, I didn’t realize what the Institute was. All I knew was that there was something odd about the Institute, they were hiring, and they paid  _ well. _ I’m sure you’re aware that being in the Artifact Storage team gives you one of the highest paying salaries in the entire Institute. It has to, if it wants to keep people around considering the shit it’ll put you through. I got hired, I think, just because I applied. Did Elias have some way of knowing that I would be such a good fit? Did he know that I would be able to endure more than any of the other applicants - because, surely, there had to be others who weren’t scared away from the ghost stories. Or did he just hire me because I had almost no connections, and my death would be almost completely overlooked? 

When I got hired, the Senior Artifact Member at the time was a woman by the name of Jen. People called her the Gertrude of Strorage. She’d been there for years longer than everyone else, was very old, and was very nononsense. I never met Gertrude, but I always imagine she was just like Jen but slight bit more hands on. She told me to my face I didn’t look like I’d last the month, and the very first thing she did was tell me how to file for a transfer if a job opened up in a new department. 

It was true, I didn’t look like I could handle myself. I never grew much, you can see how short I am. I think maybe, if I had been the one to suceed with Father’s plans, I would’ve been a concealed weapon, a secret, a hidden knife. I don’t know if that’s still true. Do I still look out of place, among the war-torn frantic members of my team? Or has Storange worn away at my soft edges until the edges of the steel I am made of show through.

I joined a week after a shipment, so most of my first few weeks were spent as inocuously as Artifact Storage ever manages to be. I had run into Leitners a time or two, but seeing how many were down there made my blood boil and freeze all at once. And the collection down there… if you haven’t been down into Artifact Storage before, I would recommend it. You’d need to be accompanied by one of my team members - preferably myself, actually - but I think it’s a good experience for everybody who works in the Institute. It’s a museum of dangers, and the sheer rang of items is mind boggling. And we do have the ledger, stating how each and every one has endagered someones life or worse.

Still, I was a bit cocky, I suppose. I was young, and after what I had been through for most of my childhood, I guess I thought there was nothing down there I couldn’t handle, that I had seen worse myself. It was a foolish idea, but even when I worked through my work load of taking the information Research had found and pairing it with what we had gotten with the last statement, it didn’t even phase me. I was raised to deal with this kind of stuff. 

God I was a fool.

It was easy to see when the next shipment was going to come. The team got antsy, the work started to get more vague and meaningless, changing from terrifying knowledge to busy work to still be allowed to claim your paycheck. 

Finally, Jen told us that we needed to come in early the following day for the new shipment of artifacts. Her declaration was met with grim silence, and a lot of them sent me sad looks. Not everybody dies to get out. I don’t know if I’ve made that clear. It’s often what happens, yes, but most of the time it’s actually injuries - physical or otherwise - that prevent them continuing work. So I don’t think the other team members thought I was going to die, but I do think they thought I was going to get maimed.

I came in when I was directed, no stranger to working during hours more on the odd end, and met with the rest of the team. They were all standing outside of the office, nervous and jittery and with grim looks on their faces. I felt underdressed, in my usual clothes compared to their gloves and goggles. Some had even brought some first-aid kits with them, even though we had a large one in the office already. They all waited for Jen to arrive, and I didn’t miss how she looked at me. It wasn’t pitying, but it wasn’t a completely cold emotion. I think she knew that whatever happened today, my life would never be the same. 

She was right. 

We all entered at the same time, and there were crates scattered all around our office, all of different sizes. There were at least papers on top of each that listed the items each crate was supposed to have, and some vague mentions of what they might be capable of, but it wasn’t very specific, and some just referenced statement numbers that meant nothing to any of us. Jen paired me up with Dillian, told me to be careful, and set to work collecting the more dangerous artifacts herself to add to the ledger and put where they needed to go.

Dillian and worked through our first crate carefully, and he handed me a pair of sunglasses he kept for sunny days since I didn’t have his tinted goggles. He told me to be careful with any books, touch things as little as possible, read the paper that came with it thoroughly but to expect things to not match up. Be careful, and know that you’re probably going to come out with an injury or two anyway.

I hadn’t handled many artifacts in my first few weeks, and suddenly being expected to treat all of the ones there with care and respect and fear was strange and a bit much. It was a little rough, those first few hours as people started to sort through the boxes. One of the boxes erupted in flames, but we had a fire extinguisher by every desk for that reason. Somebody else ended up having to smash an alarm clock with a hammer. Everybody but Jen worked in pairs, usually with one more focused on the object while the other stood by the side, ready to save them if need be. It’s a system I’ve kept around. 

In our crate, there was a mason jar filled with a black substance. It wasn’t included on our list. Dillian told me to set it to the side and we’d take care of it later, after we finished checking the rest of the inventory. 

I… I recognized it, I think. The part of me that’s always devoted to the Dark knew that it was a bit of it in that jar. Considering my past with it, I guess I thought… God, I was twenty. I thought myself so old at the time - older than almost any of my other siblings had ever reached - but I was young and stupid. I set it aside like Dillian said to, but I thought myself smarter than him. I knew the Dark better than anybody else, so I would be the one to deal with the jar. 

I put the jar down by the edge of my desk and continued with sorting through the box with Dillian. 

We were supposed to bring the items that were confirmed to be more on the mundane side down to the first level of Artifact Storage before our turn to break for lunch - we didn’t usually, but that day we took shifts so that the room of dangerous items wasn’t left unattended at any point. 

It also meant that we were alone when we went into Storage.

I brought the jar with me. We didn’t know what it was technically speaking, but I knew it was of the Dark, and so I’d be able to handle it, and it seemed perfectly fine in its glass jar, so I was going to put it on the shelf of breakables and call it good there. 

I… I was looking at the jar, while Dillian was putting adding the Leitners to the bookshelves. The darkness inside swirled around and around, never seeming to settle on a particular shade of black, and yet all the same it was a uniform abyss. Could others, not touched like I was, see it how I saw it? The depths and levels? Maybe, maybe not. 

There was a face reflected in those shadows. 

It wasn’t mine. It was Nyt’s. 

Did I drop it from the shock of seeing what couldn’t have been there? Did I drop it because for a moment I considered that maybe Nyt had become so inhuman, my older sibling was actually trapped in the jar? Did I drop it for the moment where I dared to hope Nyt was still alive, in some form of other?

I don’t know. I couldn’t tell, even under conditions like this, where the story is pulled from my lungs and lips like wrenching a hook out of a caught fish’s mouth. 

The jar shattered on the ground. The black Void spilling out. The lights in Storage flickered out as the Dark welled up. It felt like being choked, like my senses were being strangled, and yet I smiled, because that felt like being home. I didn’t move, just stared as best I could at the dark puddle as the surface of it rippled. 

Dillian shoved me behind him, shouting something, and that meant that when the dark puddle surged forward like a bullet, it hit him instead of me.

Would I have survived? 

There are too many ‘if’s in my story, but they plague me every day. 

I screamed, I’ll admit it, and I had barely enough sense to try and turn the lights back on. They did, and I could see clearer than ever Dillian writhing on the ground, scratching at his skin. I couldn’t see it anymore. It had crawled under his shirt, and I tried to tell him to stop, but he ended up breaking his skin with his fingernails, and it was too late then as the shadow took its chance to dive beneath the surface. 

The sound he made was almost inhuman.

That was when Jen showed up.

The next few hours are a blur of getting Dillian to a hospital that was used to dealing with Artifact Storage accidents. 

He was like me in the fact that he didn’t have any living family. I visited his hospital room often. He never said whether he blamed me or not. I’m not sure whether I want to know if he did or didn’t. At first, the harsh lights were enough to buy him time, but the Dark grew inside of him. It would leak out of his nose and mouth and ears and eyes. It was the same kind of fate many of my siblings succumbed to when we were younger, but this was much slower, much more painful.

And it was my fault.

Jen handed me transfer papers again, once the rest of the shipment was taken care of. I asked her if she wanted me to leave. She said that most did after than kind of thing. I don’t think she really had an opinion on it. 

I didn’t transfer, obviously. 

I had blood on my hands, and I had to make up for it.

But here’s the thing: nothing equals a human life, not really. Not even another human life. So I think I’m going to keep doing what I can to save people - so similar to my purpose and yet so far - until I finally join the numbers of dead. 

At least I know I’ll be in good company.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so this intended to be the second statement that Holly gives Jon in my fic "The Archive and the Archivist". I'll probably post the first one sometime. It's completely written up, but I feel like it reveals more about Holly's backstory than I'm willing to have known just yet.


End file.
